braciole

Food Network Friday Challenge

Tami Noyes, author of American Vegan Kitchen, over at Vegan Appetite blog, challenged us to recreate Anne Burrell's Braciole. Braciole is an American-Italian dish of rolled beef that is stuffed and braised in tomato sauce.

I have seen many variations on this and each time that I do I think - this would be great vegan. Well, here was my chance to make it.

So the obvious question is - where's the beef? Or more to the point, what will replace the beef? While at first I thought a thin slice of seitan would be great, seitan does not bend or roll very easily. The solution of course, is to roll not seitan but gluten (which is raw seitan). I made a gluten using my Firm Seitan recipe. This worked beautifully and the dish turned out super delicious.

The stuffing was rustic bread soaked in rice milk, spinach, pine nuts, onion, garlic and three cheezes - Daiya, Follow Your Heart and Parma! .

The tomato sauce is a simple sauce of onion, garlic, tomatoes, and red wine. During the braising the sauce cooks down to a lovely, rich sauce. My cooking time was 2 hours on 325 degrees, but I think 300 would have been better since there was a slight seitan-y flavor. It was very slight and the tomato sauce covered it well, but a lower temp might help keep the aftertaste even less.

Everyone liked this! I also made a How-To Breakdown of the recipe, so take a gander. 

Cost Breakdown

seitan: $3

spinach, bread, pine nuts: $3

onion, garlic: $2

Daiya, Parma!, Follow Your Heart: $5

kale, orzo: $4

tomatoes: $3.50

Total to feed a family of 6:

$20.50

How-To Breakdown